Toxteth, Liverpool. ‘Austerity is visible, but the bleakest of its marks are hidden behind closed doors.’
Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

In Liverpool, austerity is visible: boarded-up libraries, closed-down day centres and shut nurseries. But, as in countless cities and towns across the UK, the bleakest of its marks are hidden behind closed doors: the young mum skipping meals to pay the rent because of the benefit cap, or the cancer patient kept awake by fear he’ll be found “fit for work”.

Cuts that squeeze the life out of Liverpool | Letters

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What’s unusual about Liverpool is not the scale of the crisis (though as of last year the city was the country’s fifth biggest victim of government cuts) but the light the place is shining on it. This month Liverpool became the first city to add up the impact of austerity on its residents. This isn’t cold economics or futile sums; it’s a devastating, painstaking examination of what more than 20 policies have done to a whole city’s families. And with it, as Liverpool reels from having 58% of its central government funding cut, a snapshot of how Whitehall is now pushing local councils to breaking point. As Liverpool’s mayor, Joe Anderson, warned two years ago: “We’re looking over the abyss. In 2017, we fall in.”

Read through the exhaustive list of post-2010 cuts the council’s study charts – from housing benefit to universal credit to benefit freezes – and it’s hard not to feel we’re witnessing the obliteration of the welfare state. For every four homes in Liverpool, one has been squeezed by cuts. That’s 55,000 households – and it’s children, women and chronically sick and disabled people who are squeezed hardest.

These aren’t cuts that come alone, either – a few quid that can be found by going without an extra pint at the weekend – but multiple changes at once. When, say, next month’s cut for disabled people too ill to work comes in, the odds are it will be hitting people already falling short on rent because they’ve lost their council tax support. In politics, they call it “cumulative impact”. In human terms, it’s the equivalent of being struck over and over again.

People living in Liverpool District B lost £807 per household, while Hart council in Hampshire got away with £28

Carol Stevenson is not her real name but – as is case with all the lives documented by Liverpool’s study – what’s happened to the 63-year-old over the past few years is disturbingly real.

Carol, living in one of the housing association three-beds in the city, is so severely disabled that she needs a 24/7 live-in carer. But the bedroom tax means she’s had her housing benefit cut (she’s exempt for the room her carer sleeps in but she’s still penalised for the other one). At the same time, because of changes to the council tax support scheme, she had to find money for some of her council tax. Then, as the government rolled out its tougher new benefit, personal independence payment, she had her disability benefit slashed too. In total, it means she’s lost over £40 each week. That’s around £2,100 every year.

See Carol struggling to keep her head above water and you soon understand what years of Tory rhetoric – from “we’re all in it together” to concern for those “just about managing” – really means. Two years ago, it emerged people living in Liverpool District B, the most deprived area in the country, were losing £807 per household due to government cuts, while the wealthiest local authority, Hart district council in Hampshire, got away with just £28. Now, look at the breakdown of what’s happening in Liverpool and just as the most deprived areas of the country are taking the biggest budget cuts, it’s the families in the poorest wards of the city being hit hardest by policies like the bedroom tax. Austerity is not an equal opportunity sport: while the comfortable and healthy are protected, the poor and ill are devastated.

The only reason Carol has got a roof over her head still is because the council started giving her a grant, a discretionary housing payment to make up her shortfall in rent. Forget the human cost for a moment, and that’s the definition of counterproductive: central government brings in the bedroom tax and the benefit cap, and removes council tax support for low-income families – and a gutted local council like Liverpool has to pay over £3.5m of its own funds to stop its residents being turned out on the street.

The council has had to find another £3m to provide hardship grants for families who no longer have enough to survive on: the basics of food, gas, a bed, or an oven. That’s perhaps the nastiest aspect of Conservative cuts in recent years. As the government brought in policies that pushed people into crisis, it simultaneously pulled the emergency funds – like crisis loans and community care grants – that could help them.

“In the coming year we’re setting aside an additional £2m on top of the £7m we already spend,” explains Anderson of the council’s hardship schemes. “But [it will] only go a relatively short way to offsetting the impact of austerity. We’re fighting against a strong incoming tide.”